Top Five Regrets of the Dying

This Guardian article must have been written by a nasty atheist, because there’s no mention of all those people who must have said “I wish I’d spent more time in church.”

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

If you don’t want to read the short article, the Top Five Regrets are:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. 3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish I had let myself be happier.

The unwritten part is just this: If you don’t want to share these regrets as your approach your own end, have the courage to …

Be true to your own values and desires. Do some things just for fun. Express yourself. Stay in touch. Let yourself be happy.

Today, Easter Sunday, when so many are going to church, for all their various reasons, I was out enjoying this:

This is just a little nothing-special creek near Schenectady, one of the many places I used to hike with Tito the Mighty Hunter. I do love the sound, the sparkle, the cool fresh smell of running water in the outdoors.